Defying Vichy

Overview

A timely reappraisal of the actions and motivations of the French Resistance

'Pacey and engaging ... a fascinating contribution to the field' Robert Gildea

The month: July 1940. The Vichy regime replaces the French Republic after the country suffers heavily at the hands of the German onslaught during the Second World War. So began a period of betrayal, refusal and heroism. While most in the new southern zone settled for the regime’s programme of national revolution, a small number sought to make a stand in whatever way they could. Railway workers, liaison agents, guerrilla fighters, foreign agents, and everyday people. Each would play their part in destabilising Marshal Philippe Pétain’s poisonous regime, all the while rejecting the Nazi occupation of their eternal France.
Here Robert Pike delves into the story of one region, the Dordogne, all the while tracing the rise and fall of Vichy France. He casts new light on the Resistance and its members, using unique first-person accounts and newly translated archival records to highlight how ordinary people – men and women, young and old – refused, protested, fought and ultimately became heroes of the Resistance.

Author Biography

ROBERT PIKE is a graduate of the University of Exeter in History and French. His fascination with the German occupation of France and the Vichy period led to him tracking down former Resistance members and trawling official archives and secondary histories in order to understand the Resistance from the ground up. His quest to tell the stories of the few that acted, and the many others whose actions still remain shrouded in mystery, begins with Defying Vichy.